


Daisy Chains

by grapehyasynth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bus Kids - Freeform, Comfort, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Not exactly S4 speculation but post-canon, minor fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 09:15:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7216540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapehyasynth/pseuds/grapehyasynth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Since Coulson found Daisy a few days ago and got her to agree to seek counseling, Jemma has been unable to look her in the eyes. </p><p>Jemma struggles to cope with Daisy’s recovery post-S3 finale. Fitz has some advice to offer and inadvertently inspires her to extend a gesture of support for Daisy. (Mostly angst, some fluff.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daisy Chains

Jemma would like to think it is not fear or guilt or despair that makes her leave the others in Daisy’s room under pretense of locating a vending machine and instead taking the nearest exit. She knows only that she needs to get out. She finds herself behind the facility and follows the little stone path through the unmowed grass, away from the parking lot, away from the doctors and the questions and the hollowness in Daisy’s eyes.

It is a brilliantly warm day and the sun has not a single cloud with which to contend, but she still wraps her sweater more tightly around her. She walks until the building is out of sight, then lets her shaking hands fall to her side and and her eyes fall shut and releases a shuddering breath.

When her panic subsides she slowly opens her eyes again. All she can see in any direction is wild meadow, with tall waving grasses and splashes of color where flowers thrust through. There is the hint of a forest towards the south -- just a green smudge to suggest it -- but otherwise nothing.

She doesn’t think she’s afraid of Daisy. She knows Daisy won’t hurt anyone -- at least, not worse than she has already hurt them, under Hive’s sway. Daisy has become someone Jemma doesn’t fully recognize, darker and moodier and more distant, but that doesn’t mean her friend is not still in there.

And it would be selfish to make this about herself, to keep thinking -- as they all did in the early months of Daisy’s disappearance -- that they should have done something more, that one of them should have gone instead of Lincoln. There was no sacrifice that could have been made that day that would not have irrevocably shattered someone else’s world. But Daisy is the only one who has to know what that actually feels like.

But since Coulson found Daisy a few days ago and got her to agree to seek counseling, Jemma has been unable to look her in the eyes. This is not the first time the team has come to visit her at the psychiatric facility, but for whatever reason today the air in her room was particularly suffocating.

Jemma settles onto the ground, tucking her legs under her and watching the horizon, running strands of grass through her fingers aimlessly.

Fitz arrives perhaps five minutes later. She hears him several moments before he appears in her peripheral vision. He doesn’t speak, just stands a few yards away, his hands in his pockets, looking generally in the same direction as her.

She ducks her head to wipe away the tears she’s stopped fighting.

“You found me quickly,” she says finally. She finds, despite her initial desperation to be alone, that his presence is not unwelcome.

He shrugs, glancing down at her. “Jemma Simmons would never eat something out of a vending machine.”

She laughs despite herself and pats the ground next to her. Fitz sits, keeping a careful distance between them.

“Am I a bad friend?” she asks quietly, not meeting his gaze. “Am I weak for not being able to be there for her?”

“Jemma, no one would ever dare call you weak,” Fitz replies quietly. “But this is an extraordinary circumstance and we’re all being tested.”

“No one else felt the need to actively flee,” Jemma says bitterly, throwing down the piece of grass she’s been shredding. “Bet Daisy loved that.”

“We all understand why you did, though.”

She looks at him questioningly.

“Ah--” He scratches behind his ear, obviously surprised that she doesn’t follow. “The whole thing hits a bit close to home for you.”

She’s still not sure what he’s on about. “You mean when you were in the hospital--”

“No, no, that’s not it,” he cuts her off, frowning. “I was thinking more about...Maveth. You’ve both experienced a great loss and survivor’s guilt and all sorts of trauma related to that--”

His words are so true that she has to squeeze her eyes shut and fight back a sob. The hollowness in Daisy’s eyes is so terrifying because she remembers seeing the same hollowness in the mirror.

The parallel is imperfect -- she doubts whatever she felt for Will ever came close to Daisy’s love for Lincoln, and much of her own grief came from spending six months thinking she’d never see Fitz again, and therefore thinking of him as dead, but also thinking of  _ herself  _ as dead -- but so many of the markers of an inability to function normally are familiar. And further, just as she’d had to simultaneously deal with her guilt while readjusting to a life in which she didn’t have to constantly fight for her survival, Daisy had only just been recovering from being possessed, essentially, when she had listened to Lincoln about to die.

Jemma had turned in on herself, while Daisy had shifted her anger and confusion outwards, but in principle the pain might be the same. What’s more, she remembers well trying to act like everything was fine because all the people around her were the same while she’d changed beyond measure and surely they would never understand or relate or look at her the same way -- This train of thought reminds her of something Fitz said once about his injury and she looks up to find him watching her, the deepest sorrow in his eyes.

“This must feel a bit too familiar for you as well,” she murmurs.

He hesitates, then nods.

“I remember researching hypoxia for days on end,” she admits, looking away again across the meadow. “The doctors wouldn’t let me assist them but I thought if I could at least understand what was happening, it would make everything better. Would make  _ you  _ better.”

She waits for him to say something but he plays with the hem of his trousers studiously.

“But this--” she finally continues. “Physically Daisy is fine, if perhaps a bit malnourished. Her problems are something else, something I’ve never been comfortable addressing, and my science can’t help. My science can’t fix her. And I’m not entirely sure she even  _ wants  _ to be fixed.”

“She doesn’t,” Fitz says surprisingly quickly. “She doesn’t want to be fixed. She just wants you, us, here, beside her, to know she’s not alone. To wait for her.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because that’s how I felt, when it all happened to me.” He shrugs again, and she wants to take his hands and force him to look at her but that is what  _ she  _ needs, not what he necessarily wants. “And you couldn’t fix me, either, but that turned out alright.”

“With a few bumps in the road,” Jemma corrects euphemistically.

“And there’ll be bumps with Daisy too,” he insists. “There will be days she seems to hate us, days she tells us that she does. We can give her space and leave her alone if she wants that. But she should never feel afraid to come back.”

They sit in silence for several long moments. Jemma has a momentary thought that Fitz and Daisy have been there for each other more often and more supportively than she has ever had a chance to be for Fitz, but she cannot be bitter about it, only grateful that the man she loves and the woman who is like her sister could be there for each other in their times of need.

She remembers, too, how much she resisted Andrew’s therapy after Maveth. She needed it, but she did not want it. Daisy needs help as well, that much is clear, but science alone cannot fix her. But love might help her heal.

It is the leap between all the little gestures of kindness her team had extended after her return from Maveth and Fitz twisting the stem of a flower that gives her the idea.

“I know what we can do!” she exclaims, rubbing her cheeks dry again and pushing up onto her knees.

“Jemma,” he says warily, “you can’t fix her--”

“I  _ know _ , Fitz,” she cuts him off impatiently, as if everything he’s been saying for the last ten minutes wasn’t wise and powerful and exactly what she needed to hear. “It’s just something to do for the moment. I think Daisy will like it.”

She reaches over and plucks two flowers. With careful precision, she wraps the stem of one right below the blossom of the other and holds it up for his inspection.

“Daisy chains!” she explains excitedly.

“Like, flower crowns?” he clarifies.

“Exactly.” She plucks as many daisies as she can without standing. Fitz shakes his head, bemused, and helps her, dropping the flowers into a pile next to her.

He watches her work, stringing together flower after flower, breaking the stems in favor of fitting more daisies on one crown. The first takes her about five minutes.

“Ta-da!” she cries, letting it dangle off one finger. “Not bad, is it?”

“Looks a bit large,” Fitz says skeptically.

“It does not! Look--” She crawls towards him and drapes the crown across his head before he can stop her. “Unless you’re admitting to having a large head, it’s perfectly sized.”

“I’ve got a large  _ brain _ , Jemma, not a large  _ head _ ,” he grumbles, adjusting the crown, but he lets it stay there.

She makes about a half-dozen more -- a few for Daisy, to wear or decorate with as she wishes -- and a few for the rest of the team, if they consent. She stacks each completed crown on Fitz’s head, and he learns to duck slightly to make it easier for her. He looks so cherubic, with the flowers tucking behind his ears and the knots snagging on his curls, that she wishes desperately she had a camera. Instead, she stares at him openly, preserving the mental image as best she can.

“There,” she says when the final crown is complete. She pats the stack of them on his hair with satisfaction. “That’ll do. It’s a shame we murdered all these flowers, though,” she adds gloomily, looking down at the small pile still next to her.

“Hang on.” Fitz stands and moves around behind her before kneeling again. He gently pushes her chin back around when she tries to look at him, and a few seconds later she feels him gently pressing a stem into her hair.

He’s clumsy in most all areas of life, even now, after he’s grown up so quickly, but despite the hypoxia his hands have incredible control. Even without looking, Jemma can feel Fitz delicately weaving daisies into the braids which gather into a bun on the back of her head.   


When he’s used up all the flowers, his fingers ghost down over her neck and linger on her shoulder as he steps around her again to examine his work. She flushes slightly under his intense study, but he nods with satisfaction and offers her a hand.

They walk back to the facility with their arms around each other’s waists. Jemma still feels flutters of anxiety as they reenter the building and make their way to Daisy’s room, but she resolutely grips Fitz’s hand on her waist and takes the flowers chains he offers her.

She doesn’t say anything to Daisy as she presents them to her. But she squeezes her hand and tries to channel Fitz’s ability to express so much with just his eyes.

_ You are a create of beauty and resilience. _

_ We are here. _

_ We love you _ . 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This started as a really sweet fluffy image of FS sitting in a field with Jemma making daisy chains and Fitz dutifully letting her put them on him but then agentcalliope suggested she be making them for Daisy and so it spiralled into this angst.... 
> 
> Find me on Tumblr!!


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